


Everyone Fails One Mission

by DesertVixen



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 04:56:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4466219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/pseuds/DesertVixen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mission to take out a HYDRA lab uncovers a much bigger problem... </p><p>Set after Captain America: Winter Soldier</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everyone Fails One Mission

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flipflop_diva](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flipflop_diva/gifts).



The entrance to the underground laboratory complex was finally in sight. 

It had been the site of a project to create super-soldiers that could not be killed as easily as fragile humans, who would fight until they overran the enemy. Steve Rogers had not been surprised to find out that it had been based on Erskine’s work, especially now that they knew HYDRA had not entirely been taken out of play. Like other attempts to duplicate Erskine’s work – to duplicate him, Steve thought – it had not gone exactly as planned. 

It wasn’t that the results of the project could not be killed, although they were harder to kill.

It was that they didn’t stay dead. 

The team had lost several men when combatants they had thought were corpses had shown they had some life in them yet. 

Steve supposed that they should be grateful the small, hidden lab that had been part of HYDRA had stayed undercover, rather than attempting to join up with what passed for government in this depressed part of Eastern Europe. He could only imagine what it would be like if gamma rays had been involved.

It was like fighting the Chitauri in the Battle of New York, but worse. Those creatures had been hostile aliens bent on destroying the Earth and all its inhabitants. Fighting them had been a clinical process, trying to inflict a maximum amount of damage on as many as possible, and it had not bothered him.

These were people – or at least, they had been people. Maybe they had been volunteers, or maybe they had been experimented on against their will. Ultimately, he knew it didn’t matter. They had to be destroyed. A kill shot would take them down temporarily, but the only way to be sure that they were actually dead was fire. It felt like they had been fighting for hours without a rest, and Steve had been amazed to see it had barely been an hour. 

The lab needed to be destroyed as well, but if at all possible they needed to capture it intact.

But the creatures kept coming. Steve, Sam, and Natasha had some support, but not the resources they were used to commanding while working for SHIELD. The organization was still being reorganized in the wake of the revelations surrounding Project Insight. Nick Fury was still being counted among the dead, but his “death” had not reduced his access to intelligence, and Steve had a feeling that Nick Fury had been a major part of this mission being green-lighted. 

*** *** 

Calling in an airstrike, blowing the place up and chalking up the mission as a success was tempting, but he knew they couldn’t do that. For one, they didn’t have the air support. Their team had already destroyed more of these creatures than the lab should have been able to hold, which made him wonder what else they didn’t know yet – and what kind of painful surprises might be waiting for them. 

It was nowhere near as expansive as the HYDRA base he had rescued Bucky and the others from in Germany on his first real mission, but it had the same feel. There was something unhealthy in the air, as well as a level of security that made him strongly suspect the subjects of the experiments had not volunteered. 

The lab seemed completely empty, as if its inhabitants had turned the creatures loose and fled. That scenario made no sense to Steve. HYDRA members generally didn’t just give up, and even if they had decided to run for it, he would have figured that they would blow the lab to kingdom come to destroy the evidence of their research. 

“We have a major problem, guys,” Natasha called out. She had been working on the lab’s computers, trying to convince them to give up their information.

“You mean, besides the fact that we’re currently extras in a horror flick?” Sam asked.

“Define ‘major problem’,” Steve said, with a stern look in Sam’s direction.

“These guys had bigger ambitions than recreating _Night of the Living Dead_ ,” she said grimly. 

“Night of the what?”

“Do you watch any movies at all?” Sam asked.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “He should, given that he’s too busy to go on any dates.”

Steve cleared his throat. “Can we get back to the mission here?”

“In addition to their super-soldier project, they were also working on a biological weapon – probably some sort of off-shoot of the super-soldier program.” Natasha paused. “One of their operatives left two days ago, destination unknown, with samples of the virus.”

“Are there any samples left?” 

“According to the computer logs, no.” She blew out an irritated breath. “Which makes me wonder how many HYDRA double agents are still working inside SHIELD, because that move makes me think they were tipped off.”

He had known that they had not completely cleaned house at SHIELD – the only way to really do that was to burn it to the ground and start again. 

“Any idea where he went?” Steve asked, his voice hopeful.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

*** *** ***

The first cases were reported in Vladivostok, three weeks later. Once symptoms manifested, the disease acted quickly, with most victims dying in three days or less – however, the long incubation period meant that by the time the disease was reported in Vladivostok, it was also in Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Bombay, Berlin, Paris, Moscow, and Kiev. It didn’t kill everyone who contracted it, but the Centers for Disease Control had calculated the mortality rate at just over forty-five percent, with an estimated fifty percent infection rate. The resulting breakdown in trade was a major disaster as well, with food shortages in many places. The world he had been born into had been rocked hard by the Spanish flu, but this disease made that one look like a simple head-cold. Distances simply meant less, and weren’t enough to contain the pandemic.

It was the fact that he was helpless to do anything about it that ate at Steve. There had been no way that he could have known before the mission that they were working on a biological weapon.  


What remained of SHIELD’s scientist corps – mostly outsourced to Stark Industries – was examining the samples of the super-soldier project, trying to decipher what might have triggered the shift, but any answers they found would come far too late for too many people. 

It was the kind of disaster that SHIELD had been intended to protect the world from, and he had helped take that protection away from the world. The same formula that had made him what he was had been part of what created this.

And there was nothing he could do about it.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I hope you enjoyed it. I loved the prompt, and I also love Cap 2, so I was excited to give this a try. This should scratch your itch for angst with a little comic relief!


End file.
